Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Stop and take note of your vision of the world right now. When those who survive look back, that will be the proverbial "what we were thinking" as we watched the single biggest period of mass extinction in the whole of human existence.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

This has come out of my election campaign for the board of directors of First Calgary Savings & Credit Union. In my campaign I received tremendous support for my low-income banking proposal. While the force of inertia has prevailed at First Calgary (all 3 incumbents retained their seats on the board - not surprising in a city that has about a 98% rate of return for incumbents), the forces of change in the community are coming together.

(The extremely strict campaign rules prohibited me from publicly discussing it while the election was on. Otherwise, I would have done a bunch of blogging about it.)

The Hudson Valley Sudbury School reminds me of something I read a few years ago about “anarchist schools” where there is no imposed structure for learning. The students define their own learning paths in a diverse group (young kids through late teens), with the support of adults.

My own high school experience was sort of a hybridized version of that and a regular high school. We didn't have classes, but still had specific course assignments and studies that we pursued at our own pace. There were also opportunities for extended projects (I was in a Winnie The Pooh play that toured elementary schools for a couple weeks).

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

A couple of short games/quizzes that test your recognition of letters from movie posters: Movie Alphabet Game 1 and Movie Alphabet Game 2. (If you know what U and Y are in the first game please let me know - I'm stumped.)

Monday, March 1, 2004

In Blogging Off, Whitney Pastorek presents (in a fun ranting way) some of her experiences of blogs as a socially destructive force in her life. She's a non-blogger who sees blogs as taking away friendships and human contact. Worth a read by anyone involved in, or curious about, blogs.

The U.S. government has apparently backed (or perhaps even led) yet another coup - or regime change.

This month's lucky contestant is Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He's won a free abduction trip to the Central African Republic - with a complimentary U.S. security accompaniment. There, he can relax in illegal confinement quiet and comfort, free from interrupting telephones, knowing that the hassles of running a government have been stolen are behind him.